


Dive Bar Domesticity

by pennysparrow



Series: Flower Shop AU [3]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Minor David Jacobs/Jack Kelly, Modern Era, the boys form a crappy cover band to play at dive bars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14365656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysparrow/pseuds/pennysparrow
Summary: Katherine gets talked into going to see some of the boys band perform and is surprised by some of her favorite people.Can be read as a stand-alone.





	Dive Bar Domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> I was yelling Newsie headcanons at Supes the other day and this is pretty much based off of those.

“I hate all of you. With – like – a fiery, burning passion,” Katherine deadpanned. The glower she gave him was something she had picked up from Spot, but Crutchie was thoroughly immune to all of her glowers by this point in their friendship.

“It’s not that bad, Kath,” Crutchie rolled his eyes as he pushed past her.

“Oh no. It’s awful. I cannot believe that I got dressed up for this,” Kath followed after him, wrinkling her nose at the scent of stale beer and the feeling of her metallic Doc Martens sticking to the floor. They’d been waved into the bar before it opened, passing straight through the scattered tables and across the small, chipped dance floor to the cramped stage.

They stopped there while Crutchie checked his phone. “Les says they’re pulling in now. Can you help carry stuff? Please?” He gave her the puppy dog eyes and Kath gave him a dry look in return. “Jack is our normal roadie but he’s still at Medda’s.”

Kath gave him a long-suffering sigh but had already started towards the back door which the bar manager was propping open. Albert was jumping out of the back of the Petal Peddlers van, despite the fact that it was obvious that Davey was still parking. She was not even remotely surprised that he had been roped into driving or using the shop’s van thanks to Les’s insistence of being in the band and Davey’s overprotectiveness.

Finch climbed out of the van after Albert, now that it had stopped moving, and the two began unloading. Kath frowned down at herself; the crop top, velvet skirt, lace tights, and Docs the boys had all chipped in to buy her for her birthday was trendy and cute for going out like she had been told they would be doing. Not practical for helping to move a disassembled drum set. Resigning herself to her fate Katherine moved closer to the van and held her arms out, waiting for someone to pass her something. Thankfully that something was Jojo’s guitar.

After dropping it off on the stage in the bar Kath returned to the small alley and stopped cold. The Jacobs had started to help empty their van while she had been absent, and it seemed that Les and David weren’t the only ones who had come to the dive bar. Sarah was standing there, playfully arguing with Finch as the two of them lifted the bass drum. The pair of overall shorts, vintage tee, and snapback that Sarah was wearing was giving Kath heart palpitations. The eight-year-old boy in her really wanted to tug on the two long braids that hung down Sarah’s back.

“Pick your jaw up off the ground there Katherine,” Albert teased as he passed her, clapping her on the shoulder. She shot a glare at his back as he carried Crutchie’s bass in.

Shifting her skirt so that it lay just right, Katherine approached her girlfriend. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Kath!” Sarah turned to her with a grin and pulled Katherine in for a hug. Kath felt herself smiling as she nuzzled her face into the bend where Sarah’s neck met her shoulder. She heard Sarah giggle as Katherine pressed a quick kiss to the exposed skin of Sarah’s neck. The other girl ended up lightly shoving Katherine off of her and shaking her head at Kath’s antics. “What’re you doing here?”

“Same thing as you apparently!” Katherine laughed and gestured to the boys who were still moving amps and instruments out of the van behind them. “Crutchie called me up about an hour ago and said to get ‘all dolled up’ cause we were ‘going out on the town’ and then he brings me here. Apparently, his definition of out on the town was me watching their dumb band but it wasn’t mine,” she rolled her eyes, but a good-natured smile tugged at Katherine’s lips.

“And yet you’re still here, not to mention helping set up,” Sarah pointed out. She had pulled her lower lip up between her teeth in a habit that Kath had learned was Sarah trying not to laugh.

“Years of being a Girl Scout means I’m just obligated to help.”

“Ah, yes, ‘to help people at all times’ is right there in the promise,” Sarah replied, holding her right hand up in the three-finger salute.

Katherine laughed, nudging Sarah lightly with her shoulder. “I didn’t know that you did scouts!”

“Eh, I quit in like middle school. I think I finished Juniors? I honestly couldn’t tell you. David got his Eagle Scout though so that’s a thing and Les did Boy Scouts until high school and he got too busy with baseball.”

Katherine shook her head and continued to smile. Sarah had reached down and laced their fingers together as they moved slightly to lean against the side of the van. Sarah was stroking her thumb along the back of Katherine’s hand and it was making it hard for her to focus on anything else.

“So how long were you a Girl Scout for?” Sarah asked.

“Well technically I still am one. My parents bought me a lifetime membership when I graduated high school. I did it all through school and worked at summer camps during college. I, uh, still help with the newspaper badges for some of the local troops,” Kath directed her rambling explanation to Sarah’s maroon Vans rather than her face.

Sarah angled herself down slightly, trying to catch Katherine’s gaze but Kath was stubbornly refusing to meet her eyes. “Are you… blushing? Kath, there’s nothing to be embarrassed by. That’s really neat and honestly it explains so much.”

That snapped Kath out if it and she jerked her head up to look at Sarah, brow crinkling and eyes narrowing as she did so. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well for one, you own more khaki shorts and tie-dye shirts than anyone I’ve ever met and some of my best friends are actual hippies,” Sarah teased, poking Katherine in the side.

“Fair enough,” Kath laughed. She nudged Sarah with her hip and squeezed Sarah’s hand. “What else?”

“Well this is an excellent example,” Sarah nodded over her shoulder to the boys now closing up the van.

“Hmm, I’d say I kinda failed on that one.”

“Nah, you helped. It’s what got us started on this conversation anyway.”

“True,” Katherine said quickly before leaning in and pecking a quick kiss to Sarah’s lips. The other girl smiled in return and lightly tugged Katherine closer so that they could kiss some more. This was quickly interrupted by a disgruntled shout however.

“Seriously?” Les whined from where he stood in the door to the bar. The manager was attaching a bright orange paper band to his wrist to indicate that he was decidedly not allowed to drink.

The pair giggled, and Sarah stuck her tongue out at her little brother. “It’s not like you haven’t seen us kiss before.”

“So? I don’t care? You’re my sister? It’s gross to see you kissing anyone. I yell at David and Jack too,” Les informed them. His nose was still wrinkled in mild disgust as they followed him through the door. Jojo had gotten there at some point and he and Crutchie were plugging in all sorts of cords while Albert and Finch set up the drums and David stacked their cases for them.

“I’ll have to remember that the next time I see you and Sally together,” Sarah smirked at her little brother and Katherine instantly latched on to the teasing.

“Oh? And who’s Sally?” She asked innocently.

“Les’s girlfriend.”

“A girl? Les! Why didn’t you tell us you were straight!” Katherine pantomimed shock. They had all seen _Love, Simon_ a few weeks earlier and the coming out as straight scene had become a running joke amongst them all.

Les just glared at them and hopped up onto the stage to help set up. Beside her Sarah was still chuckling so Kath took it as a success. They headed over to a table at the edge of the dance floor where Davey had settled now that he was no longer capable of being any help to the band. Kath let herself relax into the chair as her friends warmed up and did their sound check. She laughed with Davey and Sarah as Les jumped around the stage and Crutchie shot them an over-exaggerated wink. Soon they were setting their instruments down and the bar was opening. People trickled in and they moved to a larger booth at the edge of the stage.

Kath spotted Race by the door and waved to him before turning back to finish her conversation. The chatter of the increasingly full bar was cut through as someone yelled her name. Kath whipped her head up in shock and nearly vaulted over Sarah as she scrambled to exit the booth.

“No way!” Kath cried, and she was swept up in a hug. As soon as he let go Kath was pushing against his chest and laughing.

“Yes way!” Specs was smiling down at her and she glanced behind him to see Jack and Romeo grinning like idiots.

She shot them a wounded look and Romeo just shrugged while Jack sold out his brother. “Crutchie was in on it too. How’d you think we’d know where you’d be?”

Katherine made an annoyed noise and grabbed Specs’s wrist to pull him into the booth after her; Sarah having slid down to make room. Sarah leaned over Kath to introduce herself to Specs. “Hi, I’m Katherine’s girlfriend-”

“You’re the famous Sarah! I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Specs shook her hand with a smile. Sarah returned it before shooting a look at Kath, her eyebrows raised. Katherine felt herself blushing at Sarah’s reaction to being talked about.

“And you must be Specs. I feel like you and Charlie were the last bastions of sanity with this crowd until my brother and I started hanging around,” Sarah joked.

Specs just laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I think that I was like ten different people’s impulse control during college. And two of them were definitely Kath and Darcy.” Katherine groaned, now fully expecting to be thoroughly embarrassed with Sarah getting told exploits of her failed all-nighters.

Right on cue Sarah raised her eyebrows and gave Katherine a wicked smile. “Oh really? Please, I’m dying to hear more.”

“You’re not interested in hearing about San Francisco? Where he’s been working and living for the past three months? Or D.C. when he was a reporter at the State Department? You really want to talk about college when Specs has so many more exciting stories?” Katherine knew that there was a whine creeping into the edges of her voice but with the growing crowd and the bar’s thumping playlist she hoped that it would go unnoticed.

“Hmm, do any of those stories involve Katherine?” Sarah asked Specs diplomatically.

“Unfortunately, no; but I would gladly tell you some quality Katherine stories if that’s what you want,” Specs replied easily, relaxing into the booth.

“You’re a reporter! There’s a code of ethics,” Katherine knew that now she was just begging for him to stop.

“Yeah, and he’s just reporting the news,” Race chimed in from the end of the table where he was passing out beers. Kath gave him her best Spot glower, but it was as ineffective on Racetrack as it had been on Crutchie earlier. Likely because Race put up with Spot’s glowers all the time and Kath’s paled in comparison to that kind of immunity.

Thankfully Specs took pity on her as he launched into one of the tamer stories from their college days. He outlined a scheme to save the rats from the school’s neuroscience lab that came about thanks to a highly sleep-deprived and heavily caffeinated Katherine. She spent the duration of the story, and especially it’s disastrous outcomes, with her head pillowed on her arms on the table. She could feel her face, neck, and ears burning with embarrassment as Sarah cringed beside her.

“Babe?” Kath felt Sarah rest her chin on Katherine’s arm. “I’ve learned quite a bit about you tonight and the boys haven’t even gone on yet. You went from a straight-laced Girl Scout to rebel rouser. Care to comment?”

On her other side Specs was shaking with silent laughter at Sarah turning Katherine’s favorite phrase against her. She instinctively knew that the rest of their friends were laughing and grinning too.

She rolled her head to the side and looked Sarah in the eye, neither girl lifting their head. “He never told you the story of how we started an actual revolution the one semester,” Kath muttered.

Sarah pressed her lips to the tip of Katherine’s nose. “That’s because I already know that one,” she whispered. Kath furrowed her brows and noticed that there was a slight blush spreading across Sarah’s cheeks. “After we had been dating for a couple weeks and I started reading your articles religiously I thought that your byline and writing style was really familiar so I- uh- well I googled you? And I found your college stuff? And realized we went to the same undergrad and that I actually knew you? At least in passing.”

Katherine blinked in surprise, straightening up to look at Sarah head on. Around them the boys shifted, letting the band members out of the booth so that they could set up for their show as more of their friends pulled chairs and sometimes tables over. “What, what do you mean?”

“I helped out at a couple of your rallies and read all your coverage of the protests,” Sarah shrugged. “I thought you looked familiar but I don’t think we were ever officially introduced and I changed so much since college I figured everyone else did too.”

Katherine laughed and wrapped her arms around Sarah, pulling the other girl flush against her. She started laughing and pressing kisses across Sarah’s cheeks. Sarah seemed shocked, completely frozen in Kath’s arms.

“Um… Kath? What…?” Sarah asked once she got over some of her shock.

“Aw, c’mon, not to sound corny or anything but it just goes to show that this,” Kath gestured between them, “that us, we’re meant to be. It’s fate.”

Sarah snorted, matching Katherine’s goofy grin with one of her own. “That’s gay,” she giggled at Kath.

“You’re gay,” Kath shot back.

“Wow Jack, you weren’t kidding about them,” Specs chuckled.

Katherine turned to her friend and stuck her tongue out at him. From across the booth, where he was nestled under Davey’s arm, Jack shrugged. “I told you that they were disgustingly domestic.”

“Oh like you two can talk,” Sarah snorted. Before it could escalate further there was the distinct sound of Les greeting the crowd through the mic. He introduced the band before they launched into their first song. They all cringed but they were cheering louder than anyone else by the end.


End file.
